The First Cut: Do Good Men Exist?

A Gothic Thriller of Vengeance and Vanishing Women

Mid-shire looks like a postcard village. But the Thames whispers secrets-and the Reverend's sermons drip with blood.

Alice Thorne knew too much.

When her body washes ashore, the suicide note in her pocket feels wrong-like the pearls torn from her throat, like the ledger pages missing from the Reverend's study. Her husband Jonathan sees the lie. Her best friend Marisa sharpens her tongue-and her scissors.

But Reverend Lock's power isn't just in his pulpit. It's in the way the choirgirls flinch when he passes. The way his late wife's name cracks like ice on the villagers' tongues. And the way Alice's final words, inked in the ledger's margins, refuse to stay drowned:

"God sees you, William. There's no hope."

Now, as the congregation turns on their pastor with bared teeth, the real question isn't who killed Alice-but how many others are buried in his prayers.

For fans of: The chilling suspense of Mexican Gothic, the twisted sermons of Midnight Mass, and the razor-blade prose of Sharp Objects.